Business, Financial & Legal - Page 153

Big companies have lots of money to spend on accountants. These accountants, in turn, go through the tax law and find the corporation ways to avoid taxes legally through loopholes present in tax codes around the world. The latest company that has been accused of doing this is none other than Apple, a company with more cash than the government.

Thanks to a new report by the New York Times, a spotlight has been shined upon Apple Inc. and shows how Apple avoids a potentially massive tax bill by using subsidiary companies located around the world. These companies are often located in locations where taxes are low or don't exist. This practice is both legal and employed by many other large corporations around the world.

Take, for instance, Apple's subsidiary based in Reno, NV. This office is just 200 miles away from Apple's headquarters. A small staff located there takes and invests Apple's profits. By placing the company/office in Nevada, they avoid paying California's 8.84% income tax, since Reno has a tax rate of zero.

MegaUpload's Kim Dotcom seems to have struck a bit of luck. A High Court lawyer has ruled that a court-ordered seizure issued in January was not valid, even though an interim order has been in effect for two months. Due to this fact, he is receiving many of his seized assets, including money and a car, back from the government.

Dotcom is said to be receiving NZ$750,000 ($614,000) in cash that had been confiscated. He will also continue to receive his NZ$20,000 ($16,000) monthly living allowance off of the interest of government bonds. His wife Mona will also get her living expenses and medical bills paid as she recently gave birth.

Additionally, Dotcom will get his Mercedes-Benz G55AMG worth NZ$250,000 ($204,000) with the license plate "POLICE" returned to him. His wife will also have use of her seized 2010 Toyota Vellfire, worth NZ$60,000 ($49,000). He has also had use of his mansion since early April with its swimming pool for exercise. He has also been able to use the internet.

This comes at quite a surprise, but daily US iPhone app downloads have dropped, considerably, with a 30-percent month-over-month drop. This is up from the 6.35 million in February to just 4.45 million in March, according to mobile marketing firm Fiksu.

Fiksu also says that it was the second straight month of decline in the course of their tracking, with a drop in January to February, but no where near as severe. January saw downloads topping 6.79 million, so a drop to 6.35 million is less than 10-percent. But a 30-percent drop the month after? That's something worth noting.

Fiksu also states that the drop is most likely due to two trends: first, the iPhone 4S is no longer a new device, so owners may be less concerned with downloading new apps. And secondly, Apple has decided to crack down on third-party marketers using bots to download apps and inflate chart rankings. This would make sense as with fewer bots, app traffic may now be coming down from its inflated numbers, down to reality.

Being based in Australia is good for a few things, our pay over here for jobs is quite good, public health is amazing, and countless other things. But the things that I like to spend my hard-earned cash on, tech and games, is ridiculously priced compared to the rest of the world.

The Australian government is now going to be looking into this, where all major computer and software publishers will be sent invitations to defend their pricing policies at a Federal Parliament inquiry. MP Ed Husic has been campaigning for fairer local pricing, and welcomed the inquiry, saying:

With the strength of the Australian dollar, most people expected things to drop in price, but, they didn't. No one really seems to care, as I can walk into most retailers in this country (and in particular, my state: South Australia) and electronic and gaming retailers are usually quite busy with customers. But, with the great Aussie dollar, most gamers (like myself) are buying and importing games from overseas.

Apple and Samsung have been at it for a while now, but it's beginning to heat up considerably. Both companies are now being ushered into a room together with their judge mediating settlement talks between the two popular companies.

Both Apple and Samsung, as well as their CEOs and chief counsels, are expected to meet up on the mornings of May 21 and 22 in a San Francisco court rather than the full trials' San Jose venue. Both sides will also have to produce statements by May 9 stating how likely they think their chances are of winning the trial.

But right now, there's absolutely no way one could guess which way this is going to go. Apple CEO Tim Cook has stated that he prefers to settle when he can, but still argues that companies should stop copying, implying that legal action might not stop without a promise of changes from GALAXY-branded maker, Samsung.

A regulatory filing Thursday shows that Fremont-based Corsair Components looks to raise $78 million dollars with an initial public offering (IPO). The company is looking to sell shares at $13 a share, with a range of $12 to $14. The filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission shows that the company intends to share 6 million shares during its IPO.

This SEC filing marks the first time that Corsair has specified a potential selling price for its shares. This has been a long time coming. Two years ago is when Corsair originally filed to become publicly traded. Its initial IPO filing in April 2010, Corsair estimated it would seek to raise $86 million.

According to the Mercury News:

It's that time of year where many companies report their Q1 financial results, or if you're Nintendo, you report your entire fiscal year. Nintendo reports its finances only once a year (annually) as opposed to 4 times like most companies (quarterly). This report is the first time in 30 years that Nintendo has reported a loss.

A lot of this is due to the financial climate that is affecting everyone worldwide. Additionally, the gaming market has changed as of late, due to the availability of high quality, free, mobile games. The 3-way struggle between Microsoft, Nintendo, and Sony hasn't exactly helped the market either. While competition is good, it does cause companies to lower prices to compete, sometimes below cost.

In August, Nintendo was forced to cut the price of the 3DS by 40%. A cut that big is never good for the bottom line. Between the price cut, and a few popular new 3D games such as Mario Kart 7 and Super Mario 3D Land, they managed to sell 13.53 units last fiscal year. This time around they hope to sell 18.5 million.

Apple's super-powered earnings call during the week has impressed the entire tech industry, but Topeka Capital Markets analyst Brian White has said that his target for Apple shares in the near future will be $1,111. Apple are poised to become the world's first trillion-dollar company when its share price hits $1,072.

With White throwing his dart toward a $1,111 per share estimate, he is predicting that Apple's market cap will hit $1 trillion sometime in 2013. Brian White has said:

Could they do it? Apple are unstoppable right now, you can't contest that. Right now, they are a smart device powerhouse.

Apple had an amazing, record-breaking quarter and tech sites across the world were grinning whilst posting this news. It was amazing, and huge. HTC also announced its own figures, but didn't get anywhere near the same press.

HTC reported a massive 70-percent drop in profits, taking in just $151.5 million during the quarter. The blame? HTC says its the iPhone 4S. HTC Chief Executive Peter Chou has specifically singled out the iPhone 4S for HTC's crappy financial results during an analyst call two days ago. Chou remained confident that HTC had better times ahead of them, but he was also razor sharp when saying that there's no chance HTC will see a return to the times when they took 50-percent of their revenue from the US. Chou adds:

If we compare the $151.5 million HTC made in that quarter, to the smartphone they blame for their dismal drop in profits, the iPhone 4S, it's quite the kick in the teeth for HTC. Apple's iPhone 4S let Apple make over $11.6 billion during the same quarter. $151.5 million to $11.6 billion is quite the jump. HTC does have hope though, hope that their family of One smartphones will help turn the company around. Chou is also optimistic that China will help make up the lost revenue from the US.

Time for another update in the oh so fun battle that is Oracle vs Google. Today former Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz took the stand as a witness for the defense and proceeded to dispute Oracle's claim and support Google's. He testified that Google did not need a license to use the Java APIs. Oracle contends that Google violated some of its patents around Java and its APIs when producing Android.

When questioned by the defense about whether Java APIs were considered proprietary code of Sun, he said "No. These are open APIs, and we wanted to bring in more people...we wanted to build the biggest tent and invite as many people as possible." His answers corroborated Eric Schmidt's in that what Google did was and is legal.

"My understanding is that what we were doing was permissible because of the sum of my experiences and interactions I had," Schmidt said. He added that he was "very comfortable that what we were doing was both legally correct and consistent" with the policies of Google and Sun.

In another attempt to further separate Apple from the rest of the world, Apple has just had a planning request approved to build a new off-campus cafeteria for employees. The idea behind this is to prevent competitors from overhearing those common conversations that often take place during lunch. This way employees can discuss secret projects without the fear of the idea being stolen.

The new facility will be 21,468 square feet and will be a short walk from Apple's headquarters. The cafeteria will provide cafes, meeting rooms, lounge areas and courtyard facilities. Apple's director of real estate spells out why the new building will be beneficial:

Additionally, the current cafeteria at Apple's HQ isn't private. Visitors can eat there if they are signed in by an employee. The new restaurant won't have this problem since it will be strictly for Apple employees only. This new building is only a stop-gap measure until Apple gets its new 'Spaceship' HQ approved.

Another partial win comes for Motorola today as a judge sides with Motorola that Microsoft is infringing on 4 of the 5 alleged patents. The preliminary decision from US ITC Judge David Shaw sides with Motorola that 4 of Motorola's patents are being infringed upon by Microsoft's Xbox 360.

Two of the patents involve Wi-Fi, two cover H.264 video, and one describes communication between consoles and accessories (5,319,712, 5,357,571, 6,069,896, 6,980,596 and 7,162,094). Shaw found that one of the Wi-Fi patents isn't being infringed upon, but upheld the claims regarding the others.

His ruling will be gone over by a six-person committee similar to the Apple ruling that was reported yesterday. Motorola, here again, is trying to ban the selling of the Xbox 360 in the United States, and unlikely as it may be, it could happen. It is probably, however, just a way for Motorola to gain leverage with Microsoft.

Good news everyone! Even with a somewhat bleak financial report for Q1 2012, AMD has managed to snag some market share back from rival chip giant Intel. While it may not be much, some more market share is better than nothing and should help the company financially going forward if this trend continues.

AMD's market share went from 18.2% to 19.1% whereas rival Intel's dropped from 81% down to 80.2%, according to Mercury Research. AMD remains strong in the desktop market where it has 43% of the market, which is the same as last year. "When you look on it as a quarterly basis, desktop has had some strength relative to mobile," said Dean McCarron, principal analyst at Mercury Research.

AMD's mobile segment saw a boost, however, as users opted for cheaper laptops, many of which contained AMD processors. "One of the things that is clear is that the market is adopting new technology faster than it used to. I would expect Ivy Bridge to ramp aggressively," McCarron said. AMD is behind Intel one generation, so keeping competitive isn't the easiest of tasks.

If you're sitting in a swish hotel lobby one day soon and a few men in suits walk in with a suitcase with a sticker on the side saying "Money Inside", and they're all wearing Intel Inside shirts or something to that effect, you've just witnessed a deal between Intel and Cray for $140 million.

Cray are handing over technological patents to Intel, where they'll receive $140 million in cash for them. The patents include hardware patents concerning interconnect technology that it used to link up multiple processors together to exchange data at high speed. Cray's shares jumped because of the news, with an increase of 24-percent to $8.75 in pre-trading, and are currently climing past $9.

Part of the deal includes around 80 of the 800 employees Cray has will be joining Intel. Cray CEO Peter Ungaro has said:

In the David vs. Goliath case that is Motorola vs. Apple, Motorola has gotten won a partial U.S. International Trade Commission judge's ruling in its attempts to block the import of Apple's iPhone and iPad. The judge has found that Apple has indeed violated one of the four patents that Motorola has accused Apple of violating.

The patent that the judge feels Apple has violated is one that relates to 3G technology. Bloomberg notes that "Pender's findings are subject to review by the six-member commission, which can block imports that infringe U.S. patents." However, in Germany, the same case was heard by another judge and the judge said that Apple hasn't done anything wrong.

"These are long wars, and it's one more battle in the war," said Carl Howe, an analyst with Yankee Group. "It's about accumulating as much intellectual property as possible. It's not good for innovation if you do that, but that seems to be where we're heading."

We were staring down the barrel of Facebook's initial public offering (IPO) which is two weeks from now, but according to people "familiar with the matter", the social networking companies recent acquisitions and other business distractions are threatening to delay the IPO, reports CNBC.

Management at Facebook have been looking at a May offering, with a roadshow launch somewhere around May 7, and the start of trading late the week of the 14th, people with knowledge of the deal said. But recently, founder and CEO of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, has been focusing more on running the business and acquiring other companies such as Instagram, than preparing for the share sale.

This is according to the same people leaking this information, which is reportedly making it hard for him and other managers to focus 100-percent on the IPO preparations. Facebook is now looking to delay their roadshow a week from May 7 to May 14, or possibly the very end of May. This would delay initial trading until mid-June.

Apple only just released their quarterly earnings report, which showed some stellar numbers and growth for the Cupertino-based company. Apple saw an insane 35 million iPhones sold, $39.2 billion in revenue with $11.6 billion of that in pure profit. Apple also saw 11.8 million iPads sold, 4 million Macs, and 7.7 million iPods. I'd call this a very successful quarter.

On top of these numbers, Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer announced that the company now has over 125 million iCloud users, which is a massive growth of 25 million users in a little over two months. How many iOS devices would you say Apple sold? Well, if you said 365 million, you'd be right. More than 50 million in the last quarter alone. The App Store has hit 600,000 apps in total with more than 200,000 of those available for the iPad.

Let's talk iTunes: there are now more than 28 million songs and 45,000 movies to choose from, which goes to show just how much muscle Apple have to flex in the media department. If we consider this growth now, where could Apple be in 3, 6 or even 12 months time? Another stellar release like an iPhone 5 or proper next-gen iPad would just be insane. The sales numbers and user stats would swell, considerably.

The tech industry is filled with patent trolls. The first was Apple and it has finally come full circle. Apple is the defendant in a new lawsuit filed in San Francisco federal court over claims that all of its products that use touch infringe on the patent. The patent in question is US Patent #6,920,619 named "User interface for removing an object from a display."

FlatWorld alleges that the iPhone, iPod touch, iPad, sixth-gen iPod nano, MacBook Pros with trackpads, and any other Mac using a Magic Mouse or Magic Trackpad infringe on its patent. Also, because Apple was informed of the patent in 2007, they are claiming that Apple willfully infringed on the patent.

Curiously enough, this seems to be the company's only activity since 2009. Additionally, the patent only covers a very narrow set of gestures, so it's apparent how any of Apple's products infringes on the patent. Even more interesting is the fact that some of Apple's iPhone patents cite the patent that they are being sued over.

Most of us know about the current lawsuit that is going on between Oracle and Google. Oracle has accused Google of using the Java language and API without the proper licensing and is seeking damages. The actual trial started last week and already has featured a large array of witnesses, though none have seemingly dealt a knockout blow to either side.

Part of the issue could be trying to explain these complex technical terms and processes to the panel of jurors. They probably have the technical ability of your parents, yet the two sides are trying to explain something that people have to go to college to study for four or more years. The result is a lot of furrowed brows and over simplification.

Oracle's technical experts aren't really enjoying the fact that the nuances in play are getting lost in the courtroom. Google's Joshua Bloch seems to have been the best in explaining in ways a regular human could understand. Because of the complex detail, one of Google's counsel rolled in a file cabinet to explain Java packages.

Apple have reached a deal with local governments to finalize its plans for a data center to be built in Prineville, Oregon. According to The Associated Press' report, Apple have agreed to invest $250 million in facilities on its 160-acre property, and will offer an annual $150,000 "project fee" in lieu of property taxes over the next fifteen years.

Apple have also guaranteed some decent job numbers, where there'll be 35 jobs introduced to the center at 150-percent of the average wage in the country. The Associated Press continues:

Back in February, Apple paid $5.6 million for the project site, and have already started the installation of a modular data center in order to build out some capacity ahead of the construction of the main facility. Apple have also made note that it's Prineville data center will run on 100-percent renewable energy.